Aging Brass: The Secrets of the Ancients

The book Machinery's Shop Receipts boasts 600 useful compositions and formulas that will surely answer Max Maxfield's questions about aging and etching brass.

I never fail to be amazed by the way EETimes community members go out of their way to help one another with sage advice.

For example, following my recent blog describing my experiments with aging brass, someone emailed me to say he had inherited a book from his grandfather that covered this sort of thing. Even better, he sent me a PDF of the "Coloring Brass" chapter, which he had gone out of his way to scan for me.

What I saw had me tap dancing with delight. This book covers much more than simply aging brass and other metals. It describes in fine detail the chemicals and procedures that can be used to realize a wide variety of colors and effects.

Of course, I couldn't be satisfied with a single chapter. I had a burning desire to feast my orbs on the whole enchilada, so I immediately bounced over to Amazon to check out the book, Machinery's Shop Receipts by the Industrial Press.

In this context, "Receipts" can be taken to mean "Recipes," which is what this book contains -- lots and lots of lovely recipes. As it says on the inside cover, Machinery's Shop Receipts contains "Six hundred useful receipts, compositions and formulas selected from Machinery's columns and republished in a classified, pocket-size edition, in response to repeated requests from friends throughout the mechanical field."

A number of paperback versions of this book are available on Amazon from different vendors, but if you read the small print, you'll see that these are simply scanned versions of the original, and they actually warn you: "This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process."

The reproductions also say "412 shop receipts and formulas," as opposed to the 600 noted in the hardcover version. I don't know about you, but this doesn't sound too good to me. Instead, I opted to purchase an original 1927 edition, the first printing copy of the book, from Bane's Books.

This little beauty arrived a couple of days ago, and I have been gloating over it ever since. One thing that did surprise me just a tad was the yellow sticky notes that were protruding from locations inside the book displaying the handwritten annotations "Coloring Brass" and "Etching Brass." I must admit to thinking, "Well, that's a bit of a coincidence."

On the one hand, the ways of the universe are wondrous, and who am I to question the grand scheme of things? (I pride myself on my humility.) On the other hand, it certainly seemed as though -- unlike my wife, Gina The Gorgeous -- the universe was taking an uncommon and unexpected interest in my hobby projects.

All was made clear when I received an email from Deborah Bane, the owner of Bane's Books, saying that the book should have arrived by now, and that she hoped I enjoyed it. Deborah mentioned that, on receiving my order, she'd Googled my name and been guided to my EETimes blogs about aging and etching brass, so she had included the sticky notes. She was also kind enough to offer some interesting suggestions about my Vetinari Clock project.

What can I say? Over the years, I have purchased numerous books -- new ones directly from Amazon and secondhand ones from a wide variety of vendors -- and I can safely say that I have never received the same high level of personal service from any other vendor. To be honest, the fact that Deborah knew this book to this degree and had taken the time to add the sticky notes to guide me to the areas of particular interest to me completely blew me away. It's a rare occasion indeed that you receive service like this these days.

What do you think? Would you be interested in seeing a copy of this little beauty? And are you as amazed as I am by the level of service provided by Bane's Books? As always, any comments or questions are more than welcome.

I left out a key point about the leatherbound TI data dooks: they covered ONLY discrete devices and each volume was over an inch thick. ICs (at least for TI) were a lab curiosity back then. I used have (may still, in one of the zillion plastic and metal drawers in my basement lab) a TI404 silicon transistor that I had managed to loosen the metal cap from. The device itself looked exactly like the old sketches in the (few) books on Semicoductor Physics (yes, I still have those) available then. It was a tiny (but visible to the naked eye) bar of P-type silicon with even tinier dots of N-type doped Si on two opposite sides of the bar. It introduced me to the optoelectronic properties of semis; I found that with the cap off, I didn't need to bias the base if the room was brightly lit! That enlightened me (pun intended) to the similar behavior of my first single-transistor radio using a Raytheon CK722 germanium PNP that I designed long before I learned how to properly bias such a device (I was 11 at that time). It worked much better at night when I would listen under the bedcovers if I shone my flashlight at it. I had always wondered why.... That CK722 cost me $7.50 in the mid-1950s, representing mowing about 5 or 6 lawns! PS: it acted that way because it was encased in plastic, not metal like the TI400.

Yes I did read it, and it remnded me (sadly) of my rash decision to toss out my old (leather-bound!) TI data books just a few years ago. I (other than what I listed in the previous post) figured I really couldn't justify the number of shelf-feet dedicated to stuff that was older than 20 years or so, or from suppliers no longer with us (even as parts of other companies). The follies of youth.... To update the saying from MY youth, "Don't trust anyone under 60!"

I used to surf the references in electronics books and app notes to find new books to read. I ended up with a bunch of old electronics books dating back to an 1894 copy of Heavide's electronic papers. My favorite is Harry S Black, of negative feedback fame, 1953 book Modulation Theory. It's really about communication theory and has chapters on Sampling, Information Theory, Pulse-Duration Modulation and Analog Digital Conversion using a coder tube. The book has the best acknowledgements ever:

"The author wishes to acknowledge the wholehearted cooperation and help of his many colleagues, particularly the suggestions of J.O. Edson, R.V.L. Hartley, H. Nyquist, R.K. Potter and C.E. Shannon."

The opening lines of chapter one are: "Boy winks at girl. Girl smiles. Here is an example of communication ..."